


Book of the Dead

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Mild Gore, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 17:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moran kills John and eats his heart raw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Book of the Dead

Sebastian Moran’s hunger is overwhelming and insatiable.  
If he isn’t careful, he can eat his rations for a month or enough to feed a family of four for a week in a single day. When he is on leave, he sleeps with more men and women than he cares to count. 

At night, he dreams of a cold room with corpses lain out on metal slabs, waiting for a scalpel to make a perfect Y-incision, for him to remove their hearts. 

Daytime brings militaristic routines, the habits of fifteen years in the army. When he smiles at himself in a mirror in a half-hearted attempt to normalize his thoughts, he sees reptilian fangs and eyes instead of human ones. Sometimes, a vague feeling comes over him that were he to reach out and try to touch the mirror, it would turn into a river.  
Those are the days that even he shudders and turns away in disgust, knowing that he is not completely human. 

*

The full realization of what he is does not come until he is released from prison after having been incarcerated under charges of desertion during wartime. 

Thirty-one years old and dating a woman who says that she is thirty, but can be no more than twenty-five. She’s a pathologist, or at least training to be one, and he finds her dull but for her morbidity, and she’s pretty enough and knows how to fuck, so he keeps her and lets her drag him to galleries and to museums.

He goes willingly to the British Museum to see their display of Egyptian relics, though. 

As they walk through the exhibit, he feels a magnetic pull between him and a statuette with a crocodile head and chimeric body sitting almost forgotten in a corner. 

It is as if a string is attached to Moran’s heart and the statue is reeling him in: a fish on a hook, made to be devoured. 

Molly trails behind him, and when he looks out of the corner of his eye, he sees her form waver and morph into a small wolf-like creature.  
She shoots him a sly, doggy smile.

They stop directly in front of the figure, watching its eyes smoulder underneath the stone. Moran stares at it until it unnerves him.  
It is a living thing. It is _him_.  
He leans in closer to read the tiny plaque:

AMMIT, Thirteenth Dynasty c. 1800BCE

They stand in silence until the sun goes into supernova and the world burns around them, when she speaks suddenly: ‘Eater of Hearts.’

*

Two years later, Molly introduces him to Jim Moriarty, a mathematics professor-turned-criminal mastermind who is in need of someone with an eye for detail and a good trigger-finger. 

Moriarty says that he knows what Moran is and can give him a feast, if only Molly would agree. 

She does, and harbours an infatuation for the man with a crocodile head. She does, and harbours an infatuation for Moriarty, with his bird-like gestures and baboon tie pin. She does, and harbours an infatuation with a man, Sherlock Holmes, who thinks he’s a god, when really, he’s nothing of that sort. 

Blood knows blood. 

She gives her heart to him, but Sherlock never returns the favour. Instead, he turns over his life to the care of a soldier who looks utterly lost and desolate until he remembers the thrill of the hunt and the scent of blood. 

Blood knows blood. 

The night after Molly introduces Jim from IT to Sherlock and their subsequent “break-up”, Moriarty shows up at her door and hisses, ‘ _He’s the one_ ’ in her ear. 

She leers at him and kisses him, bites his neck and pushes him out the door. They run into the night, shedding their human skins.

In the morning, Moriarty texts Moran, telling him the date and location, and to be ready for a surprise. 

*  
Midnight. The Pool.

Kidnapping John was far too easy. The right cab passing him at the right time, a chance meeting with Molly and her new boyfriend, Sebastian. John should have learnt his lesson, but he never does; never has the chance.

Moriarty and Moran drag John onto the pool deck, and the look he gives Molly as she handcuffs him is heartbreaking.  
Or would be, if she had a heart. 

Moran watches her, salivating with anticipation for the meal to come.

*

They had done this before, years ago, before Molly and Moran were born and in a time that Moriarty remembers only because he must. 

Carl Powers’ death was an opening gambit of sorts, the unlocking of a doorway. Left to ruminate, the water became a garden of burning flowers, ready to devour the flesh of the unwary. 

Once-white walls grew hieroglyphs detailing the journey of the soul in the underworld. 

*

Orion hangs high overhead. 

An eerie calm descends over the building as Sherlock walks in, trying desperately not to panic, the pistol an awkward weight in the small of his back that throws off his gait slightly. 

He goes through the motions of a confrontation: the threats, the puppetry, the pleas. As Molly enters the room, flashing her scalpel, with a strange red-haired man trailing behind her, Sherlock realizes what Moriarty meant when he said, ‘I will burn the heart out of you’. 

His hands are shaking. 

He tries to grip the gun the way he’s seen John do so in the past: as if it belongs there and is moulded to his hand, the hilt of a rapier held loosely and confidently. 

John looks at Sherlock like a sheep gone to slaughter, silently begging him to kill Moriarty, to kill Molly, to kill _anyone_ , as Moran tears away his shirt hungrily and Molly begins the first cut into his pale flesh. The scalpel is a needle, and the blood pouring out of the wound is thread, patching together a patchwork world. 

His hands are shaking.

He can muster none of that courage, none of John’s ruthlessness, and he thanks a God that he doesn’t believe in when John finally passes out. 

Moran lets out a whine as Molly cracks open John’s ribs, and begins to lap up the blood on the floor as it flows out weakly. When the sternum is removed _(gently, so gently)_ , and Moran stops licking at the blood and reaches his hand into the chest cavity, feeling around for John’s still-beating heart. After a short struggle, Moran rips it out and goes to take a bite from it as it shudders with the last shreds of life. 

Moriarty clucks like an oversized bird, admonishing Moran for being so _eager_ and ignoring the rites of the dead. Not that he believes in that stuff, but someone has to keep _him_ happy. 

_They weigh the heart against a feather, and the scales tip the wrong way. The ibis and the jackal feed it to the crocodile: a three-in-one, still warm with the love of a lifetime and the devotion of two more. Out of the ashes he rises with his red hair, and eats men like air._

His hands are shaking.

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](http://sherlock-rant.livejournal.com/8875.html?thread=71108779#t71108779).


End file.
